Unidentified White Male
by G.E Waldo
Summary: Summary: This story is not AU but more Alternative Scenario. Major spoilers for Houses' Head. Almost everything is else the same but Amber did not get on the bus! Rating: M. Adult. NC-17 Slash, language. Pairing: House/Wilson. Disclaimer:
1. Chapter 1

Unidentified White Male

--

Part I

By GeeLady

Summary: This story is not AU but more Alternative Scenario. Major spoilers for Houses' Head. Almost everything is else the same but Amber did not get on the bus!

Rating: M. Adult. NC-17 Slash, language.

Pairing: House/Wilson.

Disclaimer: I manipulate the sexy House and others to my hearts content. No fee's, no earnings,...just fun!

Two things brought this story possibility to mind: House waking up in the peeler bar suffering partial amnesia and watching The Bourne Identity last night. Guilty! I'm borrowing the ideas and will try my own spin on it.

This story in no way is trying to "top" Houses' Head, I just wanted to explore where the episode could also have gone. _**I have also taken some liberties regarding scenes/dialogue from the episode.**_

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Music pounded against his eardrum causing it to vibrate harshly in his inner ear and sending its language of noise and pain to an already overpowering headache.

In a dark room where the only illumination were gaudy lights of flashing red and blue, a stripper gyrated before him and smiled the phony grin of a woman horny for her customer but actually thinking about the hot bath waiting for her at home.

Gregory House, physician, sat still on a padded couch stained with many spilled drinks and watched the peeler with mild interest from nodding lids in a rough, handsome face. The peeler was very pretty, as they all were, but he was far more curious about --

--He couldn't remember. _Someone. _

The Diagnostician and the exotic dancer spoke of money exchanged and her performance. And his tired stare. They spoke of nothing really. Then she brought his attention to the blood trickling from his scalp.

He wiped at short brown and salt hair and his fingers were red, then, too. Suddenly he had to say, "Someone's going to die." Not knowing exactly why he said it or why it was terribly important.

Seeing the peelers startled look and quick retreat, he was quick to assure her, "Not _you_."

House stood and the peeler backed off, giving him room to limp away. He limped badly she noticed, like a man who ought to have a cane or something. Limpy man with the bloody hair passed from the interior of the bar and from her mind.

XXX

"You're sure you saw House get on a bus?"

"For the tenth time, yes. He insisted on taking the bus."

"Which route?"

"I didn't notice."

"Why would he insist on taking the bus home?"

"Honey, you'll have to ask him that." Amber, her straight blonde hair pulled back by a hair comb, kissed Wilsons' distracted, but attractive, cheek and left for her afternoon shift at Plainsborough Hospital. Saturday was Wilsons' day off.

But it was not Houses' and he had not showed up for work.

Wilson dialed Houses' apartment for the sixth time. No one had heard from House since Friday night. Amber had been the last to see him when he called for a ride home from the bar he had spent the afternoon in, drinking himself into a state unfit to operate a motorcycle. When Amber had showed to ferry him home, House had refused the ride and gotten on a city bus. That was the last anyone had seen him.

The ringer trilled until Houses' answering machine spoke in his ear. "You have reached your Gigolo. Leave your name and number and the details of the naughtiness you plan to do to me on the beep. Three, two, one - _BEEEP!"_

Twenty minutes later, Amber called. "Babe. Late last night there was a really bad bus accident. Nineteen people were injured and sent here. House isn't one of them but I just thought it was a weird coincidence that House said he was taking a bus-"

"-and then disappearing."

"Yeah."

Wilson thanked her, slipped into his jacket, grabbed his keys and drove to the hospital.

"I need to interview the injured. The patients from the bus accident." Wilson explained to Doctor Cameron. Cuddy had recruited everyone, including Houses' fellowships Hadley, Taub and Kutner to help deal with the sudden influx of the injured.

"Why?" Cuddy was busy checking the blackened eye of a patient. "You can go. Keep some ice on that eye for a while. It'll help with the swelling." She dismissed the patient and turned to Wilson.

"House -- Amber said House took a bus home from the bar last night."

"Well, he isn't here. It had to have been a different bus, one that didn't roll over twice."

"Yes. But _this_ bus was a number Six Crosstown, that's the bus House would probably have taken to get home."

"Home from where?"

"He was at a bar. Sherrie's bar. The number Six passes right in front of it."

"Then maybe he's asleep in his bed?"

"I called six times. Isn't he supposed to work today? Since when does House miss work for anything?"

Cuddy finally considered. "He spends hours devising ways of going home after he _gets_ here but, no, he hasn't missed a day since I hired him."

"Maybe he was injured but sent elsewhere. Are the paramedics still here?"

"I don't know."

Wilson hunted them down in the cafeteria but they could remember no man matching Houses' description. "But there were four ambulances." One of them offered. "Maybe one of them treated him?"

Calls to the other hospitals in the greater area produced only one usable bit of information. "I remember one guy. About fifty in a leather jacket but he was just standing around looking at the wreckage."

"Did he have a cane?"

"No. I asked him if he was okay. He didn't answer."

"Did he look okay?"

"I wiped some blood off his hands. Assumed he was a passerby who was being a good Samaritan."

"But he looked okay otherwise?"

"I honestly don't remember."

An hour later, Plainsborough received a call from a neighborhood medical clinic. A man had been found wandering in a park with a bleeding head.

Cuddy put the phone down and called Wilson. "No ID," She relayed the details. "But he matches Houses' description."

Wilson recruited Foreman and Chase in the unusual rescue operation.

Back at Plainsborough House seemed disoriented and had suffered a gash on his scalp but at least he remembered their names and his own.

"You don't remember anything else? How you got out of the bus or walking a _mile_? I don't how the hell you managed that. And without a cane." Wilson inquired gently.

House was perched on an exam table while Cameron carefully stitched the gash in his head.

In answer to Wilson's question, House shook his head.

"Stop moving." Cameron said. "Unless you want your nose stitched to your eye socket. And stop picking at your ear. It's bleeding."

"I don't remember much. Just waking up in the park." House frowned, his eyes narrowing and darting around like he was seeing something not there. "Someone's dying."

Cameron and Wilson exchanged looks. "You're fine, House. But your ear - we're getting you an MRI to be sure."

"Not me."

"Yes you."

"I mean I'm not dying. It's someone else."

Foreman exchanged looks with Wilson over the top of Houses' head. House caught it. "And you can stop rolling your eyes at the sick man. I'm not imagining it."

"Who's dying?" Wilson asked.

House stared at him, his eyes going from certain to confused. "I don't know."

Foreman took Houses' arm to assist him off the table. "Well, you can think about it in the MRI."

Cuddy examined the MRI scan and told House. "You've got a lateral fracture of the Parietal bone."

"I banged my head."

"This is more than a banged head." She argued. "That's why the blood, and the dizziness and the memory loss."

"Someone's dying." House said again. His voice was quiet but the tone of his certainty had not faded.

Wilson shook his head. House was always after a mystery, but that was when he was sure there was a patient. "Why do you need to solve this? You've got a stack of medical mysteries on your desk. Why is this one so important? Why suddenly Batman?"

House shook his head. Less certain due to blank hole he found at the center of what should have been a horrific experience in a bus crash. He remembered none of it. He remembered waking up in a strip club and walking through a park. "I don't know."

Cuddy said sternly. "You have a fractured skull and a concussed brain. Go home. Go to sleep."

For once he accepted that the wisest course was to obey.

XXX

A stranger entered his slumber and spoke to him in riddles. " I was on the bus. I'm the answer."

"No you weren't. You're an anomaly."

Brown hair over beautiful confident eyes, stared at him from their blue depths. "I'm the answer. Look inside yourself."

She began to bleed from the roots of her hair until she was coated in red, her golden color draining away until she was a grey, dead thing sitting across from him on the Number Six Crosstown. Street lights and shopping malls were passed by where oblivious people strolled purchasing things reserved only for the living.

House woke in a sweat and a pounding heart, the unpleasant images swiftly fading from his memory, their metallic taste washing away in the soft shadows of his bedroom.

XXX

House spotted Cuddy in Emergency admitting, speaking to some new interns, giving them the standard pep talk. He interrupted. "I need to talk to the people who were on the bus."

Cuddy threw her newbies a small smile and steered him away from the impressionable group. "What are you doing back here?"

House had stayed away from the hospital for under a day. "House. Those people have gone home. Only the bus driver is still here. He broke both his legs."

"Then I need to talk to him."

Cuddy knew House would do it behind her back if she said no. Cuddy called Cameron. "Can you spare a minute? Show doctor House to the bus drivers' room. Give him five minutes with the man then kick Doctor Houses' ass home where it belongs."

Cameron, knowing a little about Houses' obsessive nature, walked away, knowing he would follow. "Come on."

One floor up, House met the small Asian man he remembered as the driver from the crash less than two days previous. House quickly observed the casts and the mans' grimace. House decided to eliminate him as the possible dying mystery passenger. "Broke your legs huh?"

The fellow nodded, then he noticed the cane gripped tightly in Houses right hand. "You were on the bus."

House nodded impatiently. "Yeah. Any pain anywhere else? Dizziness? Weakness? Nausea? Vision problems?"

The guy shook his head.

"We did check for those." Cameron piped in.

House nodded to her, acknowledging that she was not an idiot.

"What's going on?"

House shook his head, trying to dispel confusion or shake loose a memory. "Someone's dying. Someone who was on the bus that night."

"House. You have a cracked skull. With your obsessive nature, you see mysteries and conspiracies everywhere." She noticed a red drip from his right ear and dabbed at it with a pocket tissue. "And you're bleeding again. You need to go home."

House walked away, scratching at his ear. He turned back. "Were any tall pretty brunettes admitted from the accident?"

"Check with Admitting. They should still have the files, and you should go home."

"No." He whispered, confusion blanketing his features. "Somebody's dying because I can't remember." House limped away in a hurry towards the Emergency admitting window.

A quick search of the paperwork produced no tall brunette females. One short one. Mother of two. Healthy as a horse. Sent home with a facial cut.

Cameron walked up behind House who was still standing by the nurses window staring at nothing with narrowed eyes, wanting to see what wasn't in the room. Wanting to remember details that had abandoned him. She took his arm. "Satisfied?"

He shook his head, gently pulling his arm free. "I'm not imagining this." He said to her face that was almost crumpled with concern. "Maybe she got off the bus before the crash? She's dying but not from the accident."

"Then you'll never find her. And if she got off the bus then she's probably fine."

"She's not fine." House walked away. "She wasn't fine in the dream."

Cameron called Wilson.

Wilson found House at his desk. House was thinking with his eyes closed. Or sleeping. Wilson hoped it was the latter.

But House opened his eyes when his door opened. "I'm not going home." He said before Wilson could spring the words first.

"Oka-a-y." Wilson did not sit in the chair. He stood before House like a stern dad. "But there is no woman."

"Yes there was."

"Why? Why do you believe there was a woman? Or anyone whom you think is dying?"

"She was in my dream."

"I see. She was in your _dream_, therefore she's real?"

"I don't care how this sounds. I saw something and I know someone on that bus is dying. Just because I can't recall the details doesn't mean I'm wrong."

"But amnesia does explain why you can't _remember_ the details. You're not even sure she was on the bus. You _dreamed_ her. _After_ the accident."

"She said she was the answer."

Wilson walked over and put a hand to Houses forehead. "You have a fever."

"A mild one. It's not making me imagine things."

"But your broken skull might be." Wilson let out a great sigh. "Tell you what, I'll help you research your dream. We'll try and find this woman. For twenty-four hours. We'll check the obituaries - I _hope_ she's in there because that would end this - we'll call these other people who were on the bus and ask them if they remember her. Will that satisfy you?"

House played with his bottom lip. Then he reluctantly gave Wilson a nod and heaved himself to his feet. He swayed a bit and Wilson leaped forward to lend him a supportive arm.

House recovered quickly. "I'm fine."

"Actually, you're not." Wilson lead the way. "Come on. Let's go find your mystery woman."

XXX

In his office, Wilson spoke into his personal phone. "Are you sure? Thank you." He hit _End_ and disconnected the call to the last person on the list of names and numbers they were able to obtain from Admittance. He crossed off the last name with a pencil with a curved end and painted with red and white stripes.

In answer to Houses' questioning look at it, "Gift from a ten year old last Christmas. Can we focus on the problem at hand? I mean the real one? - that my friend is losing his mind."

His dig elicited no reaction from House. "Okay." Wilson relented. "The fruitless calls are done. No one remembers her. What's next?" House sat in his visitors chair rubbing his leg with his right hand and picking at his ear with his left. "And stop picking. You want it to get infected?"

House stopped his finger but his mind went on. "Something's missing."

"Your memory." Wilson gestured to his pale face. "Your blood pressure. A healthy skull." Wilson threw down his pencil and it rolled off onto the floor. "I can almost, just barely, conceive of risking your life by sticking a knife into an electrical socket to answer the question _Is there an afterlife_? Or take possibly diseased blood into your veins to eliminate a wrong diagnosis. And maybe, maybe I can understand a deliberate overdose to punish _me_.

"But to risk your life to try a find a woman you _dreamed_ about?" Wilson shook his head at his best friend. After almost fifteen years of friendship, he was beginning to realize he didn't really understand House. Or even know him the way he thought he had. "That is the definition of a cracked skull. You're sick, House. Go home."

"I dreamed about her because she was there!" House stood and paced, angry. And tired of his word not being believed. "She is not a figment of my aching head or a hallucination. She was on the bus."

"Fine." Wilson sat back, resting his aching back against the lumbar correct desk chair. "Why do you believe she was sick? It can't be because you just looked at her. Even you're not that good. So what were her symptoms? Were there any symptoms? _One_ symptom?"

House stopped and stared at Wilsons' pencil on the carpet. "She was hurt before she got on the bus." A memory stirred and took a misshapen outline. "She was already sick when she got on the bus."

"This woman you dreamed about _after_ the accident." Wilson felt worn out.

House spun on him but had to grab the back of the chair to stop his dizzying momentum and falling down. "Yes. I know. I'm obsessing. I saw a woman I have never seen before in a dream _about_ the accident who was hurt or sick. Who was - _is_ - dying! If I'm wrong so what? If I'm right, it's worth looking into. Was I wrong the other time? With soldier boy?"

Wilson had to admit House had be right. But he had not had a cracked skull then, just a kinked urethra. "Suggestions?" Wilson ventured. He was fresh out.

House looked away.

Wilson stood. "Go home. Maybe you'll dream about her some more. Maybe you'll learn something more that will lead to a diagnosis. Or even a _name and address _might be good. That's your standard procedure, isn't it? Try to learn more? Wait for something to change?"

House finally conceded, mumbled thanks to his friend, and left.

Wilson watched him limp away down the hall. "See you tomorrow."

XXX

"How fah do you wownt thet ticket fowah?"

The heavy diphthong and yawning vowels of the far south invaded the aching drum chorus in his brain and settled down into their own particular choice corner of splitting agony.

"What?" He tried to see the brunette with blue eyes through the red shifted haze through which he saw the world. He could feel the blood rushing through his ears, adding its high pitched insect whine to the beat of his aching head. After a few hard blinks and shake of his delicately balanced and painful noggin, things became clearer - clear enough that he was able to respond.

A blonde woman sat staring at him with barely contained annoyance. "Um. Where am I right now?" He asked her. Was this a dream also? "How did I get here?" He was not on a bus. "Where are you?" House called to the tall brunette whom he could not see.

The older, platinum haired woman shifted her glasses in the telltale mannerism that said she was a busy woman and he her newest irritant. She snapped her cherry flavored gum. "A'm raht _heyah. _Look, Mistah, Ah got customers. You wownt thet ticket oah nawt?"

Tired blue eyes stared back then drifted to a sign on the wall above her head. _**Tallulah - Birth Place of the Indoor Shopping Mall.**_

"West." He said. Over her head was a small mirrored picture of a green and yellow field of corn into which he peered, staring at the stranger that was himself staring back, blank of face. Blank wasn't good. Blank was frightening.

He was a tall man with medium brown turning salt and pepper hair clipped to within two inches of his scalp. It was a bit mussed up. His eyes were as blue as the Mediterranean sea and appeared as confused as he felt. He was wearing jeans and a black tee-shirt with something about a pawn shop written on it. He looked down and saw sneakers on his feet. Over the tee-shirt was a tan colored long sleeve cotton shirt. He felt around in his jeans pockets and came up with no wallet or keys. He patted himself down. Nothing.

In his hand, gripped tightly, was an old mans' cane, curved wooden handle and all.

"Hey, mistah." She got his attention back, stamped the piece of paper in her hand and tucked away the money he had evidently handed her prior to looking at her for the first time. He took the ticket she held out to him. "You kin wait over they-ah."

Rows of hard chairs joined at the seat lined one window-less wall. Only two of the dozen were occupied.

This was his first time here he thought. Only time, he reasoned because he couldn't actually remember stepping up to her ticket window or where he got the money in his hand or how he got to the bus station he found himself in.

What day was it? What time was it? He was certain there was someplace he was suppose to be but he couldn't put a finger on where or, even if he knew the address, how to get there.

But west was good, wasn't it? West was away from her unhappy gaze and cherry denture breath. Away from the oppressive heat that was making little trails of sweat break out all over his body and trickle uncomfortably down his flesh.

His head hurt. West sounded like the thing to do.

He accepted the ticket with a large, rough hand he didn't recognize and said in a voice belonging to a man he did not know, "Thanks."

XXX

(Yes, that _IS_ how this part ends)

Part II ASAP!


	2. Chapter 2

Unidentified White Male

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Part II

By GeeLady

Summary: This story is not AU but more Alternative Scenario. Major spoilers for Houses' Head. Almost everything is else the same but Amber did not get on the bus!

Rating: M. Adult. NC-17 Slash, language.

Pairing: House/Wilson.

Disclaimer: I manipulate the sexy House and others to my hearts content. No fee's, no earnings,...just fun!

Two things brought this story possibility to mind: House waking up in the peeler bar suffering partial amnesia and watching The Bourne Identity last night. Guilty! I'm borrowing the ideas and will try my own spin on it.

This story in no way is trying to "top" Houses' Head, I just wanted to explore where the episode could also have gone. _**I have also taken some liberties regarding scenes/dialogue from the episode.**_

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In Emergency, "He borrowed about a hundred bucks." Cameron said. "Not the first time."

Wilson, thoroughly familiar with Houses' borrowing habits, checked with Houses' team. "He got fifty bucks off me." Kutner said in answer to Wilsons' question.

Wilson was glad. At least the man had cash on him. A hundred, fifty bucks wouldn't get him a plane or train ticket but maybe . . .a _bus_ ticket?

"Well, _I_ haven't seen him since we said goodnight yesterday." Wilson told Kutner. "Did you try calling?" It was a stupid question. Naturally they would have.

But for his benefit, Kutner shook his head. "No answer on his cell phone. Maybe we could go over there?" Kutner was waiting for Wilson to offer his personal apartment key to the mysterious interior of the Domain House. "He does have a skull fracture . . ." Kutner said to further the hint and push Wilsons' passing curiosity to outright worry.

Wilson stood up and shrugged into his coat. It was true enough. House was sick. Just because he did his best not to act sick didn't mean he couldn't be lying on his floor unconscious from his injury, maybe brain swelled or drugged into a stupor from not just his leg but the bouquet of newest pains.

Houses' apartment was empty. Wilson dialed Houses' cell phone and heard a trilling from somewhere in the livingroom. Kutner and he both searched with their eyes. Kutner, finally getting down on his knees and fishing the small phone out with his hand. Wilson hung up and the trilling device shut-up.

A thought occurred to Wilson and he did a quick visual search of Houses' computer desk. His wallet was there beneath a carelessly discarded shirt. "He doesn't have his wallet with him either."

The touch of nagging worry had suddenly ballooned into great concern. House was somewhere without his phone and wallet, a stupid thing the absent minded genius had done once or twice, like when he rode his motorbike and got arrested. But the Honda was parked out front.

"Does he have any cases?" Wilson asked.

Kutner. "One. We're doing fine with her so far."

_Only good news I've heard all day._ Wilson glanced around the apartment as though in vain hope that some of the furniture might 'fess up to the whereabouts of their owner. Kutner was out of ideas and shrugged.

Wilson thought they should have kept House handcuffed to a sick bed. "_Crap_."

XXX

"We have no idea where he is." Taub and Chase were elected to inform Cuddy of her employees' sudden disappearing act.

"Do you think he might be hallucinating again? He might be in the park wandering around? Confused?" She hoped.

Chase explained. "Hadley and Kutner are checking all around the area and Wilson's looking into all of Houses' usual haunts. So far nothing." His Australian cadence became pronounced when he was worried. "If House is experiencing any swelling, he could be in danger. If the swelling severe enough, House could suffer permanent brain damage if it isn't taken care of right away."

Cuddy rubbed her temple. From the headaches she had lately been experiencing, she wondered if she had not been in the bus crash as well and just didn't remember. "God." _Someone needs to rope that man in. _

Cuddy hated the idea of restricting Houses' movements (which she had done in the past supported with threats of firing or jail) or overseeing his medical maneuvers. House was so much like a kid with a brain way too big for his own good. But the brain itself brought so _much_ good to his dying patients. As in, more often than not, a diagnosis and treatment.

"I'll call the police and tell them Plainsborough might have a missing doctor." She said. "I'll emphasize his messy medical status to hurry them up."

Wilson had an idea. "House was obsessing over the accident. He might have taken a bus somewhere." By the last word, his statement became a half question. It was possible.

Cuddy nodded. "I'll let them know he might be on a bus or have gone to a bus station somewhere."

XXX

"We may have found your guy."

Sergeant Roberts said into Cuddys' ear and her heart leaped. House had been missing over twenty-four hours. "Thank you Sergea-"

"I said it might be him."

Trust a cop to play the caution card. "Is he there?" Cuddy hoped House was sitting in the police station eating a fried egg sandwich and insulting the cop filling out the paperwork.

"We checked the video recordings of the local bus stations, a Greyhound Depot came up with a tape of a guy who fits the description. One of tellers seems to think she may have spoken to him. It doesn't sound promising, but it could be him."

From cautionary to a big, fat doubtful.

"We need one of you to come down to the Station and look at the tape. Tell us if it's him or not."

Cuddy elected Wilson as chauffeur and down they went.

In minutes they were staring at grainy footage of people in line at a Bus Station purchasing tickets. A tall man largely obscured by the crowd, stood in line at the third and farthest from the camera, teller.

_Figures. _Cuddy narrowed her eyes, straining to see some familiarity in the figure. "He's the right height." She said and looked at Wilson who nodded.

"That might be House. The clothes are usual."

"The teller said he seemed out of it." The Sergeant told them. "He was pale as a ghost and swaying a bit. She thought he might be drunk."

Wilson half nodded. Given Houses' customary dismissal of good sense where his health was concerned, it was conceivable.

"Paid for his ticket in cash." Sergeant Roberts said.

"Ticket to where?" Cuddy asked.

"Teller gave him a one way south Drop ticket. That means he could be in Louisiana by now or anywhere in between here and there."

"Great." Wilson said but looked at the footage with misgivings. "I don't see a cane."

Cuddy leaned closer. "I do. It's leaning against the counter."

"Okay. If he uses it-"

The man in the poor recording picked up the cane with his left hand, put it in his right and limped off camera with Houses' particular crippled gate.

"That's him." Cuddy said. "Now what?"

"Now we chjeck every Greyhound Depot between here and Louisiana." Sergeant Roberts answered.

Cuddy asked Wilson. "Why the hell would House buy a ticket to Louisiana?"

"The teller said she suggested it." Roberts answered. "He was "out of it", remember? He probably didn't know exactly where he was going."

"Maybe we need to just wait for him to come home." Wilson stated the ridiculous thought aloud. It was stupid but for a reason he wasn't sure about, he needed to hear it. "Maybe he had a family emergency or something?" House had no family in Louisiana. He had no cell phone and no wallet.

Wilson noted Cuddys' expression. "Okay. Stupid suggestion." The he had another, less stupid thought. "What if he thinks, for some reason this dying woman was going there?"

"That was a hallucination." Cuddy answered, then turned to quickly explain to the cops' sudden raised eyebrows at the words _dying woman_. "No one's dying. Doctor House was in a bus accident, he has a cracked skull and was experiencing hallucinations."

"Maybe he had more hallucinations?" Wilson insisted. "Even if she doesn't exist, House thinks she does." He waited for Cuddy to come up with something better. When she didn't, he said to the Sergeant, "Can you contact the Bus Service between here and Louisiana? All the places it would have stopped since yesterday? Maybe someone saw him."

"We have no jurisdiction there. We'll have to contact the other precincts and fax them his photo and a copy of this footage. It's going to take time."

"How much time?" Cuddy asked. "This man is sick."

"Another day at least."

Wilson bit his lip. With the shape House was in, another day wandering around the south country might be enough to cause serious damage. If this dying woman existed, Wilson hoped House found her, or the risk to his own life was for nothing.

XXX

"He talked about it, yes." Cameron said to Wilson. Wilson was playing detective on his lunch hour, trying to glean as much information as possible from the varied and disoriented conversations House had with the staff prior to his disappearance.

"He said he was certain someone was dying. A woman he saw on the bus. She was sick before she got on. He even came down to the Emergency to look around for her. Twice. He borrowed the cash the second time."

"Did anyone come through here even in the last week that resembled the woman he described?"

"No one I remember. Lots of women, lots of brunettes, but none as tall." Cameron took a moment to organize her thoughts. "House said she kept telling him, in his hallucination, that he already knew who she was. House insisted she was sick before the crash."

"Did you see House before the crash?"

"Yeah. He came down for some acetaminophen. Said they were for a headache. I assumed he had run out of Vicodin."

Wilson had written House a prescription just a few days before. But House had been upping his dosage again. Thirty-six Vicodin usually lasted him about four days at the outside and that was when he stretched them. "Maybe." Wilson felt something missing from everything he had learned, which was almost nothing. So lots missing. He shook his head.

"Did he seem okay to you?" Wilson felt like an idiot for asking. "I mean _other_ than the cracked head and the hallucinating?"

"Not that I noticed. He was speaking a little loudly, but it was noisy in here."

Wilson nodded again. He hoped like hell Sergeant Roberts and his police pals came up with something, like House, soon. His own little detecting had turned up zilch.

Wilson left Emergency. Oncology duty called.

XXX

The rocking of bus number 1129 out of Tallulah lulled him into a shallow sleep. He would nod off and wake up, then nod off again, like a stone skipping across the surface of a lake.

"Hello."

House was seated by the aisle. Window seats were better for viewing, but not for getting to the bathroom without having to stumble over someone with ones' bad leg and cane. The brunette sat beside him, smiling a little as though to an old, comfortable friend.

"What are you doing here?" House asked the hallucination. He was so tired.

"You believe in reason above all else. You know who I am."

"No, I don't. I know you're dying."

"Yes. What are _you_ doing here?"

"I, . . .I think I'm trying to remember something."

"Who are you?"

"That's what I'm trying to remember." He looked over at the tall brunette with the blue eyes. She stared back like a reflection. "You probably are just a figment of my damaged skull."

"Whose skull is damaged?"

He couldn't think of a name. He couldn't recall much other than he was a cripple and was riding a bus somewhere for some purpose. That's about it. And he thought he knew her. Or should know her. He shrugged.

"You already know who I am." She insisted.

"If I knew that, I'd be at home in bed," _Wherever that is_, "instead of going God knows where on the South Express."

"I know you."

"I can't help you if I don't know who you are."

"Then I can't help you."

"You don't need to."

"You got on a bus to look for me."

"I can't just give up."

"Who can't?"

House struggled with the question. He was so tired. And now hungry and thirsty. The bus was sweltering. He shivered. "I don't know."

"You can't remember who you are?"

"I know I can help you."

"All you really know is - I'm familiar."

"I hate this cryptic stuff."

"Something real then. Something your reason can accept."

"What?"

"Look." She said.

"What?" He didn't look.

"Look." She said again, and this time he did. Her leg was bleeding, the blood pooling at his feet. Congealing into a grotesque mass. "You're bleeding." He said.

"Yes I am. And there's nothing you can do." She said.

"Yes I can. I'm a . . .I'm, I know a bad bleed when I see it."

"I'm not the only one who's bleeding." She said again.

House felt the tiny trickle of wetness draining from his right ear to his shirt collar. The buses' brakes squealed and the bus pulled into a small Depot in small town America. He had come here because . . . . House wiped at his bloody ear with a tissue and turned to speak to her but she was gone again.

"Next time you do that," He said to cover over the feelings of fright swelling inside, emotions she had left behind, "wear something sexier."

XXX

Wilson spent a few minutes after work walking through the grounds of the hospital, trying to think. His phone rang and he put it to his ear, expecting a patient.

It was Cuddy. "House bought a ticket west in Tallulah. The teller distinctly remembers him. He looked bad."

"So now he's on a bus to where?"

"He bought another one-way ticket. West this time. Paid cash and seemed to have no destination in mind."

"Great." West narrowed it down to half of the northern hemisphere. "Are they checking the bus he took? Where he might be stopping?"

"Of course. He could be anywhere between Tallulah and Las Vegas by now. He paid enough to travel about fifteen hundred miles."

Wonderful. "Has Roberts contacted hospitals and clinics between there and . . .where-ever? House is out of Vicodin. He'll be in pain."

"Yes, they're checking. Do you know how many hospitals and clinics are on that buses' route? It's going to take time."

"I know. I know." He was tired and thirsty. Spotting a snack kiosk, he walked over while talking. "If he traveling all over, he might not be as bad off as we thought. He's trying to track down dream woman."

"I'll call if anything turns up." Cuddy ended the conversation.

Wilson ordered a orange soda and a hotdog with mustard and sauerkraut. The woman prepared his order and he sifted through the bills in his wallet for a Five. Handing it to her, she smiled pleasantly at him. Wilson tried to smile back but it faltered so he mumbled a thanks instead. She had a friendly face and looked right at him in that way that some people had when they know someone needs to talk.

"Sorry. Got a friend missing." Wilson took a bite. "He's a doctor here."

The brunette nodded. "I do a good business here. Doctors, nurses as well as the regulars."

Wilson sipped his drink. She continued to look him in the eye. Which was unusual. He looked down on most women. Almost all of them. This woman was tall. This woman was brunette. She had nice eyes. Blue eyes. _Really_ blue.

She was the perfect fit for Houses' hallucination. The hotdog tasted like sawdust. "Did you ever get a man here with a cane? Uses it right handed? Five o-clock shad-"

"-Oh yeah. He comes almost every day. I haven't seen him for a couple of days though."

Wilson knew his next question would make him seem nuts. "Were you in a bus crash a couple of days ago?"

She frowned then sniffed, giving him a wary but so far tolerant turn of her lip. "No."

Wilson nodded. "When was the last time you saw the guy with the cane?"

"Day before yesterday."

Before the crash. "Did he seem okay to you?"

She thought for a few seconds. "Other than a itch he was fine. We talked about my cold but he usually doesn't say very much. Asks for his food and coffee. Sometimes he sits at the tables. Sometimes he goes back inside the hospital. Is he a doctor?" She blew her nose.

Wilson was distracted, thinking furiously. "Yes." He finally answered her. "Thank you."

Wilson dropped his half eaten snack in the trash and called Cuddy.

"I found the woman." He said to her.

"Houses' hallucination? Are _you_ hallucinating?"

"She's this tall brunette who works at a food kiosk on the hospital grounds. House must have recalled her face after the crash, and subconsciously placed her in his hallucination. This whole dying woman thing is a goose chase - House is tripping. He's on a bus traveling west like a pioneer trying to find a dying hallucination he conjured up out of a memory which _originated_ somewhere he probably can't remember."

"The hallucination is beside the point anyway. The idiot is suffering from the effects of a _broken skull_."

True, the brunette - and Houses' hallucinatory version of her - was ultimately irrelevant though Wilson felt that he shouldn't outright dismiss her quite yet. More importantly, "Any leads?"

Cuddys' words were sharp but her tone kind. "Not since the last time you called a half hour ago."

Wilson thanked her and hung up.

So House was sick but probably not as sick as they had imagined. Still he was riding a bus around the country. He'd forgotten his wallet and probably left his phone behind on purpose so no one could call him and try to talk him out of it whatever this was - his search for a dying woman who was very real, very not a mystery and in perfect health serving hot dogs to the daily lunch crowd, including most days - _House._ This whole thing was nothing more than obsessive House on a crazy quest to solve his latest mystery. Puzzles were his _other_ drug.

When House got home, Wilson thought, he better be okay and ready with an apology or he Wilson was going to _kill_ him.

XXX

Part III ASAP!


	3. Chapter 3

Unidentified White Male

--

Part III

By GeeLady

Summary: This story is not AU but more Alternative Scenario. Major spoilers for Houses' Head. Almost everything is else the same but Amber did not get on the bus!

Rating: M. Adult. NC-17 Slash, language.

Pairing: House/Wilson.

Disclaimer: I manipulate the sexy House and others to my hearts content. No fee's, no earnings,...just fun!

Two things brought this story possibility to mind: House waking up in the peeler bar suffering partial amnesia and watching The Bourne Identity last night. Guilty! I'm borrowing the ideas and will try my own spin on it.

This story in no way is trying to "top" Houses' Head, I just wanted to explore where the episode could also have gone. _**I have also taken some liberties regarding scenes/dialogue from the episode.**_

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House stepped off the bus. The Depot smelled like most. Diesel fuel overlaying the odor of coffee and greasy food. This bus station was tiny, reflecting the smallness of the town.

Activities across the street drew everyone's attention as they disembarked.

"What's going on, Driver?" One lady asked.

"I dunno." He said. "Must be an emergency. That's the hospital."

A smallish building constructed and staffed to serve a town of ten thousand.

"I wonder what happened?" Another passenger said, then wandered off to procure coffee and some form of lunch.

House wandered toward the flashing ambulance lights and scurrying people in white, blue and green.

Someone rushing by with a chart addressed him as he entered the Emergency doors and took in the scene of patients on wheeled beds, some with burnt clothing, some with burnt flesh.

House spotted a man whose forehead was sweating. His chest was blistered flesh. House stopped by his bed. In the hubbub no one noticed him remove a stethoscope from a utility drawer and listen to the mans' rapid heart.

With all the authority of an MD with twenty-five years under his belt, House said to a passing nurse. "This man is dying."

She stopped and stared for a second at Houses' jeans, tee-shirt and leather jacket. "Are you Doctor Grey? Because we've been expecting you."

"What's happened?" House asked her.

The helpful nurse handed him a doctors' white coat. House looked at it strangely then slipped it on.

"An explosion at the chemical plant. Fifty, sixty injured. I don't know how many dead." She told him then recalled his first words to her. "Why is he dying? Doctor Matiesta said he was stable."

"Well Matiesta's an idiot. Look at his face." House answered as though she were blind. "He's sweating like a pig despite severe burns. And despite the pain he has to be in his expression is blank." House took a small needle from the same drawer he found the stethoscope and poked the conscious mans' cheek. "No reaction to stimuli. He's not feeling _any_ pain from the needle. That means the tumors are probably bilateral and into the secondary lobes of the parotid, maybe even into the mastoid. He's got cancer. It could be lymphoma, melanoma or even a squamous cell. Get a CT and schedule an O.R."

Nurse No-name stared for a few seconds, then went to do as she was told. If she'd had any questions as to his ability as a doctor, particularly due to his street clothes, she immediately dismissed them. "Yes, doctor."

House rubbed at the ache in his right leg, staring down at his cane. "And find me some morphine." He ordered.

XXX

Seven hours later his leg was killing him. House massaged it, wondering what the hell he had done to his thigh. That he was on a cane suggested it must have been something serious and a while ago.

The Emergency beds at Pecos Memorial had emptied out, most of the burn victims stabilized and shipped to Lubbock or Abilene. The more serious were nestled into the small burn unit. They would be moved if and when they were well enough.

House sat nursing a hot, watery beverage the cafeteria called coffee and fingering the small vial of morphine the nurse had brought him hours before. No one had questioned him or asked him his name. He knew he was a doctor and it was obvious they thought he was a doctor, so he saw no reason to worry about it. His fevered head, rather, gently told him to dismiss such minor concerns. House was glad to. It was nice just to sit and stare out the window into the night sky.

But the damn leg got worse and he was forced to turn his attention to it.

House left the horrid coffee behind and found a staff washroom. Using a shoe lace he tied off his left upper arm and prepared a small dose of morphine. Relief was almost immediate as the wonder liquid flowed into his veins. The throbbing in his thigh faded and became only a memory itching at the back of his mind.

Maybe he was going nuts? Maybe he didn't just crack his skull . . .he couldn't recall exactly how that happened. He remembered brunette lady. She hadn't shown herself for several hours.

But here he was sitting in a bathroom in Pecos (someone had mentioned the towns name to him), shot up with morphine chasing a woman - a hallucination - he believed was dying. It was possible he hadn't seen her at all. She might exist only as a waking dream he'd been having since . . . he couldn't remember that either.

He was truly exhausted. He ought to go home.

House walked to the emergency desk and said to the first nurse he saw, "Do you know me?"

The busy red head looked up at him. "Um, no doctor. Not personally."

"Do I work here?"

She looked with slightly more alarm. "Weren't you assisting in Emergency today? Aren't you the doctor they sent us from Odessa?"

House felt terrible. Faint and hot and more tired than he had ever felt in his life.

The room, the nurse and her puzzled eyes changed to colors of grey. The blackness shrunk down around him to a dim bulb near burned out, then to a pin hole, pinching off the light.

"I don't know." he said, falling to the hard floor.

XXX

Wilson undressed for bed. Amber was on the night shift all week and though he kissed her cheek lovingly goodbye, he was secretly glad. It gave him the freedom to worry about House without having to pretend for her sake that he was not worrying about him.

He lay on the medium firm mattress and wondered what to do next. House was either sick and lost or off on a puzzle chase or maybe both. Despite all protestations, his eyes closed.

-

-

Wilson stumbled through a ruined city. It's street lamps were darkened and its structures slouched with decay. Everything he encountered, animals and people, were dead. The cars were twisted, burning wrecks. Even the air smelled like death.

Through the haze, Wilson saw a large vehicle, worse off than most. It lay on its back, a warped tire or two still sluggishly spinning. In it's side was an enormous hole, big enough to walk through almost without crouching.

Wilson stepped inside.

Inside the belly of the smashed city bus, now a squished chassis broken almost in two, the dead lay everywhere. Wilson picked his way around jagged metal and twisted forms of the passengers, (like stepping into the carcass of a dead whale with a hole ripped in its side from the jaws of a monster to discover it's half digested dinner) and wandered through the smoky interior.

He stumbled over a form as still as any.

It was House, barely breathing and staring up with unfocused eyes. Wilson crouched down to look for other signs of life. He felt a small pulse at Houses' throat, but his friends face was as white as the chalk-stone sidewalk. His eyes stared, unblinking, into dead space. Everything was matted in shades of white and grey but for the blood red wetness trickling from Houses' right ear.

Houses' body jerked violently and liquid the color of caramel gushed from his ear, washing over Wilsons' shoes. Houses' lips moved, speaking without sound. He was calling to him, his mouth gaping open and shut like the maw of a suffocating trout in a dried up river bed.

House the Dying was saying words, important words Wilson the Living could not hear. He struggled to understand what House was trying to tell him.

House was telling him, . . .telling . . .

Wilson awoke stiff muscled, sore headed and soaked. His heart pounded loud and quick with the dream memory of House in shivering death throes. Wilson felt wetness on his back and felt around with one hand, wondering if he'd actually peed the bed. But it was just the moisture from the hard sweat of his nightmare.

With wakefulness, sound and vision returned. Color illuminated the elusive recesses of his mind and comprehension arose. Wilson could see and _hear_ the symptoms. For a brief moment, he could almost feel the wrongness of the House in his vision. The danger was evident. Death was imminent.

His patient was sick. _Treat him. Cure him._ No small order. Wilson was, for this once, the involuntary Diagnostician leading a differential with himself as both teacher and student.

Something made him look over at his night table. On it stood a lamp, a clock radio, a yellow notepad from work. And a red and white striped pen. A candy-cane pen.

A _cane shaped_ pen.

The diagnosis in his head came forth like black ink on a whiteboard and he understood.

"House." Wilson whispered in the dark. The walls were as mute as he had been to this moment. "Oh my god." Wilson sat up, his heart sped up again, this time from genuine fear and not just the kind that visits in a dream. He spoke it aloud, wondering if he was wrong. Questioning himself. But he didn't think he was. Everything fit. Houses' words.

"_House_." Wilson said to the empty room. "It's House. The woman is _him_. _House_ is the one who's dying."

XXX

Wilson called Cameron first. "When House borrowed the fifty bucks. You said he scratched at his ear. Which ear?"

Cameron, her voice sleepy from being awakened by a ringing phone at four in the morning. "Um. Wilson? Ah," yawn "His right ear, I think."

On the side with the fracture. The woman at the kiosk said House had an itch. He himself had seen House scratch at his ear once. And House'd had a _fever_. A bleeding ear was a sign of a skull fracture but not a fever and_ itchiness._

Wilson said into Camerons' distant ear. "I think House is in worse trouble than we thought."

XXX

Cuddy paced in her office. Wilson, Foreman and Chase discussed Wilson's theory. "You think he had an ear infection before the crash?" Cuddy asked.

Wilson nodded. "Look, House said this supposed woman was sick before she got on the bus. I think the woman is House. I think House was projecting himself as a woman in his hallucination. Don't get me started on how much future fun I'm going to have with _that_."

Foreman crossed his arms. "How can you be sure?"

"I can't, but it fits." Wilson appealed to them. "Look - House spoke to that woman almost every work day. She's tall, she's blue eyed. They _talked_ about her illness - her cold. Houses' fevered, infected and cracked head could have jumbled all that together into a mystery patient with a mystery illness. His memory had gaps. His subconscious was trying to tell him _he_ was sick."

"Why didn't he feel ill? Why didn't he treat his ear infection? House would have noticed pressure, pain - " Chase asked.

"- Yes. But the first symptom is often just itchiness. I think it was the beginning of a simple ear infection until the crash. House might have noticed it and decided to do something about it. But then he got on a bus and it crashed. His skull cracked. He lost his memory. The infection started to spread. That's why he became more confused _later_. The teller said he seemed distracted. Unfocused."

Foreman raised his eyebrows. "It could explain why he would go off on a _bus_ trip. Amnesia victims tend to gravitate toward the last familiar thing. Plus House is by nature methodical. He was probably trying to stimulate his memory of the woman - his "patient" so it would lead to a diagnosis. Or at least so he could find her."

"Have the police come up with anything?" Wilson asked.

"They and every precinct with available manpower are still reviewing videos from bus stations from Tallulah and every stop between there and West Texas. We won't know anything until tomorrow." Cuddy bit her lip.

Wilson crossed his arms and sat on the edge of Cuddys' couch. It was the first time he let himself sit down since waking up eight hours earlier.

Cuddy asked the question she feared the answer to the most. "Do you the infection has spread into his cerebrospinal fluid?"

Foreman nodded. "With the evident confusion and the memory loss, it probably already has. If he doesn't get treatment immediately, he could die."

Cuddy sat down, picking up her phone. "I'll call Sergeant Roberts back. Tell him to alert the hospitals and clinics in . . whatever towns the damn bus was going, so they can keep an eye out for House. When he really starts feeling sick, maybe he'll have sense enough to go to one."

Wilson finished up his day and went home. Amber was still at work and he was grateful. He needed time to think and just . . . _be_. The thought of House dying was not a new one. House was a drug addicted, alcoholic who cared little about his own safety. But the thought of House dying alone in some damn alleyway or clinic waiting room hundreds of miles away. . .that was much harder to contemplate.

Amber was his girlfriend and he cared about her very much. House was his best friend of seventeen years and he . . .

. . . _loved_ him. He did. Like a friend or a brother. Maybe even deeper than that. As infuriating as the man could often be, House grew on you. Like a loud 1970's disco shirt you just can't bear to part with. It was the only one. It had sentimental value. He cared about House and Wilson was ashamed to realize that he had never, ever told him so. House had said once that he loved him. House the aloof, so-called cold, unfeeling man had admitted to a feeling for Wilson that he spent countless hours denouncing. And in his small, weird ways, he had also shown it now and then. Like erasing the rental apartment message.

A weird example to come to his mind and Wilson actually laughed a little. Referring to Wilsons' moving in with him while his marriage was on the rocks, "_You stay here for a while - that's a fight. You get an apartment - that's a divorce." _House has said. Then he had tried to mix some fun and tease into their often grating time together; trying to make Wilson laugh, trying to help him feel better.

House could be dying. Wilson felt the sudden urge to get in his car, drive west, find him and wrap his arms tightly around him.

Wilsons' heart thudded with the thought that House could already be dead.

XXX

"Who is he?"

"Doctor Grey." The efficient nurse responded and continued to cut away the patients' clothing. He, the doctor in question, had fallen, seized violently and lay still on the Emergency room floor for a few seconds before anyone could recover long enough from the shock to make a move.

But when they did, they did it fast. "Grey" was on a table and being examined in under a minute.

The attending looked oddly at her. "This isn't Doctor Grey. Doctor Grey is a _woman_."

The nurse looked down at their newest patient, the one who had spent the day helping out in Emergency with burn victims. The man who had diagnosed a burn victim with cancer simple by a fever and poking him with a needle. That patient was in surgery getting his cancerous masses removed - the tumors their unconscious, nameless man had predicted were there. If he wasn't a doctor? - "Then who is he?" She asked.

Doctor Wadwah shook his head, his heavy red and grey brows coming together in concentration. "I have no idea."

The last of his clothes were cut away and their patient was naked. "Did they check his clothes for ID?" Wadwah asked her.

"No ID. A vial of morphine."

Wadwah, examining the jagged white scar on the mans' right thigh, could guess why. "Hmm." He noticed a discharge from his patients right ear. "He's got a discharge. Maybe an ear infection." Placing his stethoscope on the patients' chest, Wadwah listened to his heart. "Too fast. And he's fevered." He gingerly palpitated the side of his patients' skull. "A bit of swelling there. I doubt even a sever ear infection would cause a seizure or even swelling - unless it had been ignored for weeks."

Wadwah draped his stethoscope back around his neck. "Start him on intravenous doxycycline and get a CT of his head just to be safe. This could be bacterial meningitis or something worse." He looked at the mans' face. There was something a little familiar about it. "And call the Sheriffs' office. Have them send someone out. See if we can get a handle on who this guy is."

XXX

"Doctor?" Wadwah spoke into his patients' ear. The doctor was groggy (Wadwah decided to assume the man was a doctor until he was otherwise enlightened. The patient had obvious _training_ as a doctor), but then his eyes opened and he looked around. A very blue pair of irises wandered slowly around the room.

"Doctor?" Wadwah tried again. "Do you remember what happened?"

House stared at the pink, out of focus man. He thought he ought to know him. Finally the heavy set, sagging face of a plus-sixty man became clear. A stranger. In a whisper, "What?" is all House could manage.

House could feel that he was covered by a sheet, had electrode monitoring pads taped to his chest. He could hear his own heart beat on a machine somewhere to his left and felt a stiff rod up his penis. Well, he was in a hospital and he was on a vitals monitor and a urine bag. Simple things he had felt often enough to immediately understand their significance. He was bad off or recently had been. It was a start.

Wadwah tried again. The CT had shown a recent skull fracture. The ear infection, which had gone untreated for many days, appeared to be responding to the doxycycline. "Do you know where you are? Do you know your name?"

House tried to shake his head but it set the room spinning. Finally he looked over at the man with some clarity. "Where am I?"

"You're in Pecos Memorial Hospital."

The name meant nothing.

"In West Texas." Wadwah added.

The patient stared back at the ceiling.

"Who are you?" Wadwah asked.

House tried to think. "I'm a doctor." He was sure about that part. Funny. He didn't _feel_ like a doctor. Was he sick?

Wadwah was glad to know that at least. No inquiries would come from the Medical Board as to why they had allowed a layman who wandered in off the street treat patients. They could rest at ease about no giant law suites. "You don't remember your name?"

House shook his head. There was a woman . . .

"There was a woman . . ." he said then trailed off.

"Yes? What woman?"

"She's dying . . .I think." He really couldn't be sure anymore. His head ached. His leg hurt and he wanted to go home. If only he remembered where that was. "I don't remember."

"Were you in the fire? There was an explosion. Do you remember that?" Wadwah asked.

House thought he remembered smoke, tumbling and pain. That was all. Not really sure about anything, he shook his head.

Wadwah nodded, expecting that not all of the man's confusion would disappear at once. He spoke to the dark haired male nurse attending. "Keep an eye on him. Someone, somewhere has got a missing doctor."

The nurse nodded and leaned over the prone patient. "Thirsty?"

House looked up at the dark, messy hair and brown eyes. He ought to know _this_ one.

The nurse gave him a sip of tepid water from a paper cup.

It was a hospital all right. Cold, refreshing water was against the rules. House took one more sip and coughed. "You got something against ice cubes?"

Young, male nurse smiled and said, "I'm Dave."

Like he didn't believe him at all. "Sure you are." House answered and closed his eyes to the bright overhead lights and the irritatingly sweet smile of . . .of . . ._Who_ was this? He really ought to know that.

"Oh, you really did bang your head didn't you?" Dave said. He straightened Houses' covers and patted his arm. "You're cute." He walked tot he door. "I'll be back soon."

"Tell Amber I'm sorry for cracking my skull and ruining her weekend."

Nurse turned back. "What?"

"I said tell --" But the name and the image slipped away like oil drops on dishwater. Tell someone . . . _something_. "Never mind."

"That's okay, honey. You're confused. And whoever Amber is, I'm sure not with _her_. Marcus would be pissed to find I was a _closet_ case."

House had no idea what Wilson was talking about, but he was too tired to care. Wil - -whoever had been speaking faded from reality and he slipped deeper into the comfortable hole he had gradually been digging for himself while they had chatted. House didn't remember digging but that wasn't important. During the pointless exchange, fever and darkness snuck in on slippered feet and made off with lucidity. House was adrift in a semi-conscious mind and red dreams of dark, undefined terrors took him down and down until the bottom dropped from sight.

He was falling forever. Then all thought stopped.

Out at the nurses station, alarms went off.

XXX

Part IV ASAP


	4. Chapter 4

Unidentified White Male

--

Part IV

By GeeLady

Summary: This story is not AU but more Alternative Scenario. Major spoilers for Houses' Head. Almost everything is else the same but Amber did not get on the bus!

Rating: M. Adult. NC-17 Slash, language.

Pairing: House/Wilson.

Disclaimer: I manipulate the sexy House and others to my hearts content. No fee's, no earnings,...just fun!

Two things brought this story possibility to mind: House waking up in the peeler bar suffering partial amnesia and watching The Bourne Identity last night. Guilty! I'm borrowing the ideas and will try my own spin on it.

This story in no way is trying to "top" Houses' Head, I just wanted to explore where the episode could also have gone. _**I have also taken some liberties regarding scenes/dialogue from the episode.**_

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"He was doing fine when I left last night. Why is he here?" Wadwah asked the RN on duty in Intensive. She handed him the mystery patients' chart and nodded her head at David. It wasn't necessary, Wadwah had assigned David from the Emergency ward to the ICU.

David explained to Wadwah. "Our patient seizure-ed and defib-ed. They had to shock him twice."

Wadwah was not offended by Davids' use of the possessive. Though not a physician, he took the care of the patients under him very personally. David harbored a rarely encountered quality hardly seen anymore, even in the nursing profession -- that of love of humanity. David _liked_ nursing. He loved people. He was born for human care taking.

Wadwah scratched his head, talking more to himself. "The culture was positive for ottitis infection. No spread to the lining but the swelling is pressing against his brain. All old news. So what the hell else has happened?"

David told him what he knew. "Blue eyes was delirious last night. Kept talking about some people. Mentioned some names. Amber. Wilson. He said he was a doctor."

"Which one?"

"No, John Doe said _he_ was a doctor."

A tiny bell went off in his head and he looked down at his patient on the ventilator snaking from is mouth and the wires trailing from his chest to the vitals monitor. Wadwah asked himself - _Did he look familiar? _Or was it he just thought so because David mentioned the man had said the word doctor? The patient had probably been hallucinating from fever. Still . . .

"Um. Keep an eye on his temperature and I want him on a second antibiotic. We've already got him on erythromycin so Pediazole should do it. I'll be back shortly."

David nodded, watched the doctor leave and went to his patient. He wrung out a cool cloth and pressed it to the man's hot forehead and perspiring face. "Don't worry, hon', Wadwah's good people. And smart. He'll figure this out." David liked the prone mans' features. He was twice his age and though lined and rough with several days whiskers, handsome in a odd-ball-professor sense of the word.

Over the last two days, he himself had bathed the man and had been momentarily shocked by the ugly, white scar marring one of his otherwise delicious looking legs. And, David recalled back when the fellow was semi-conscious, his patient possessed the bluest, dreamiest eyes he had ever seen. "We'll take care of you. Wadwah had the police come and fingerprint you and take your picture, but I made sure you looked good for the camera." He winked at his comatose patient. "That wasn't _hard_, handsome." He wrung out the cloth and lay it on the mans' fevered forehead. "We'll find out who you belong to soon, sweetie."

-

-

-

Wadwah went to his office computer and pulled up a medical data-base of who's who. Using his password, he started scrolling randomly through files and photos of the professionals in the Texas medical community, paying special attention to the MD's. But after a few minutes, he realized it was silly. He had a one in a thousand shot of stumbling across the right file - if there even was one - of their patient.

David said John Doe had mentioned two names. _Amber_. A first name and not enough to go on to begin a search. Many physicians, especially female physicians, used the first initial instead of their proper name which made the search even more daunting. Using first initials to disguise their sex tended to sift out some of the prejudices that female doctors still often encountered, even in their so-called modern, enlightened age.

But the other name, _Wilson_. Definitely a last name. That narrowed it down to the W's. If this Wilson was a doctor or someone in the medical community, it could be that their patient worked with him. Maybe if he could find this Wilson, he could figure out who his patient was.

There couldn't be _that_ many physicians with the last name of Wilson.

Wadwah discovered that yes, there were many dozens in fact. He had his work cut out for him. He would have to examine each file and look for Wilsons in whatever hospital or clinic he or she worked and then check the files of the other staff working alongside _that_ Wilson.

As well, their patient could have traveled from anywhere in North America. Or Europe for that matter. Wadwah decided the easiest route was to eliminate the possibilities in Texas and go from there.

Doctor Wadwah soon discovered that many files did not even have accompanying photos. The older ones, prior to about 1970, usually didn't have photos. Wadwah did a quick mental calculation. Wadwah guessed their patient was probably between forty-five and fifty-five years of age. That would put his birth between 1954 and 1964 and that meant he would have started medical school anywhere in the years beginning about 1973 to 1983. Wadwah guessed the man was below rather than above fifty, so he should start looking at files --

--he stopped. He had no idea what age this Wilson might be though. Just because John Doe was about fifty, didn't mean Wilson was. He or she might be much younger or much older. But not that much older. Not retirement years, not if this Wilson was still practicing -- assuming he was -- but not that much younger either. Wadwah figured because the patient mentioned a Wilson, the Wilson would most likely be an important person in Does' professional or personal life. Or maybe both.

Wadwah narrowed his search by the parameters of age he had just worked out in his head and started his search all over again. It reduced the list considerably. Sixteen names. Sixteen Wilsons to check over.

His pager beeped.

XXX

"His temperature is rising." David reported the moment Wadwah entered the ICU. He passed the other critically ill beds and bent over his patient. He checked his pupils with a small flashlight. "Normal dilation." But he could feel the heat rising in waves off the man. "But yes, he's certainly not rallying is he?"

David always liked Wadwahs' quirky tendency to vastly understate. When it came to patient care though, Wadwah never underestimated the possibility of a patients' condition worsening. Wadwah was good, but he still recognized that he was human and that humans err. In an effort to keep himself humble, Wadwah often said "Any doctor can make a mistake." He was a careful and thorough physician.

"I need to talk to the technician who did the CT. Ask him if he used contrast."

David got on the phone. When he hung up he said "No contrast."

Wadwah was definitely irritated and rubbed the top of his patchy head. "Goddamn _bean counters_." It was hospital policy to cut budget corners where ever possible and contrast was almost as expensive as the CT itself. "Have them do it again." He hated to have to put his patient through another move and more manhandling to do a second CT, but before he moved on to other less likely possibilities Wadwah wanted to be sure his patients' head trauma was just that and nothing _more_ serious than what they had already confirmed. "Dammit. Make sure they understand I want contrast this time."

"Yes Doctor."

Wadwah watched David accompany the orderly to Radiology. X-rays, blood tests, tox' screens had all come back negative. Other than the rash, which was explained by the high fever, there was nothing to indicate this man was ill. But ill he very much was. "Page me the minute it's done." Wadwah returned to his office and his data search.

Texas was eliminated. Only two Wilsons and neither worked on-staff with anyone whose picture resembled his patient. He had sifted through the files East of Texas and was down to about five of them. Two in New York, one in North Carolina, one in West Virginia and one in New Jersey. He decided to switch to the northern part of the country and pulled up the New Jersey doctor.

Wadwah read the file aloud to himself. "Doctor James Wilson. Oncology Department Head Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital." The photo was of a handsome and still youngish doctor. He read the birth date. 1968. Impressive that so young a man had already established himself as a Department Head of such a prestigious facility. A teaching hospital no less.

Wadwah began sifting through the other PPTH staff. There were hundreds. Doctor and nurses tended not to socialize together (unless they married each other. That was one interesting aspect of his chosen profession. Nurses married doctors, other nurses, policeman and firemen. In the foxholes of the medical battlefield, people tended to stick together), so he decided to assume that Wilson, and therefore his John Doe, would not socialize much with the nursing staff. That narrowed the search of possibilities to just the physicians on staff. The Dean was L. Cuddy. He pulled up the picture. A beautiful woman. First name Lisa. There was that hiding of the sex behind the initial thing.

Wilson was a Department Head. Maybe this John Doe was also. Similar professional status? Could be.

Wadwah went through the list of names on the yet unopened files. Kassab, Martin, Yates, Chase, Foreman -- oddly, a "temporary _co_-Department Head" -- House . . .

Wadwah paused. He had heard _that_ name before he was certain. Maybe he had seen John Doe before.

He pulled up the photo and was shocked to see his John Doe looking back at him from behind somewhat unfriendly eyes. He read as bit of the physician. "Doctor Gregory House, Nephrology, Infectious Disease, Department of Diagnostics, trained under Doctor Alan Samuel, Boston General . . ." Wadwah stopped. He'd read enough. "Jesus . . ."

He had lying up in Radiology with a killing fever and angry rash, a skull fracture and a mystery illness none other than Gregory House, the nutty, but renownedly brilliant physician who made the medical journals regularly for his successes. He cures the desperate, the famous, the rich, the criminal. Even the illegal refugee.

House was the doctor who had been shot. He was the one the CIA called out and the man who cured where no one else had been able to.

Wadwah wiped the sweat from his face.

House was the one dying up in his own hospitals Radiology unit. "Fuck _me_."

-

-

-

Wadwah went to his doctor/patient - his famous doctor/patient who appeared to be getting worse under his care.

Wadwah stared down at his comatose and very sick patient and wondered what the hell had happened to bring him to west Texas in such precarious health to begin with.

Wadwah had Admitting make the phone calls to New Jersey.

He had read brilliant medical articles penned by House on Diagnostics. House was like the Einstein of modern diagnostic medicine. Rumors circulated. People exchanged weirdness stories. House was eccentric, they said. A drug addict. A cripple. A drunk. He was nuts, careless, reckless, rude and indifferent to his patients. Wadwah suspected the last was limited to the emotional sort of indifference because Doctor House saved almost everyone ever sent to him and such success could hardly be ascribed to indifference.

House, back in the ICU ward, lay very still under Wadwahs' watchful eyes. The doctor untied his patients' gown and spread it to expose his chest and abdomen. Wadwah sucked in a breath and spoke sharply. "Nurse!" The blotchy pattern of tiny red spots had spread and was covering his patients' body starting below the nipples almost to the groin. "The rash is spreading." Wadwah pointed out unnecessarily. "When did it get this bad?"

David shook his head. "I have no idea. I bathed him this morning. It was no worse then." He was shocked by the rashes red, angry appearance.

"It might be from the heightened fever, but . . ." Wadwah didn't think so. Something else was going on. "Get a scraping, make sure the ear infection hasn't somehow morphed into something else -- check for staph' and monitor his temperature very closely. Check it very half hour." Wadwah frowned. Unconscious and fevered, brain swelling and a rash. He had an idea. "This might be Red Person Syndrome. Monitor that rash like white on rice. The last thing we need is to have to give him steroids." Which would tank his immune system and render any antibiotics useless. That _would_ kill him.

XXX

Wadwah peered closely at the CT scan the technician had provided. He could see nothing but the skull fracture - which Wadwah recognized as not exactly "nothing" -- but no sign of anything else other than what his eyes told him. There was a small amount of white matter - which the tech had described as "shed material" meaning dead skin cells polluting the fluid. If anything else was there it was being masked by the extra fluid -- unlikely -- or there was nothing else to find.

Wadwah was less than satisfied. "Any infection other than the ottitis?" He asked the attending nurse. David was a studious, well trained and experienced nurse. His relative youth did nothing to alter Wadwah's opinion of him. He was always glad when their schedules coincided so they would be working together. He had requested David as Doctor Houses' sole day nurse.

"The lab tech' said nothing showed up in his blood work other than slightly elevated white count."

Wadwah murmured. "That would be from the ear infection. This rash doesn't make sense . . .this has got to be an allergy." He looked down at his famous patient. Famous in the medical community anyway. Wadwah was loathe to think Doctor House may die under his hands. "Do we know when his people are arriving?" Wadwah felt silly for his choice of words. It sounded as though he were speaking of a rock stars' entourage.

"This evening I was told." David answered. "Sometime after nine was the first direct flight they could get."

Wadwah sighed. "Super." But anything could happen in between now and then. He had fifteen hours to try and sort this out and prevent his patient from deteriorating any further.

Not more than an hour later, David paged Wadwah. "His temperature is at a hundred three." He said as the doctor entered his patients' room. Wadwah quickly looked over the chart but little had changed other than the rising temperature. "Schedule an O.R. We're going to do an exploratory on his skull."

David nodded and made the call.

Wadwah inserted a drainage tube to reduce the volume of the swelling, then made an incision from the base below the right ear to the top of Houses' skull. Next he stripped all the neck muscles from the side of his head. "Now let's see what we can see." He commented to the assistant surgeon and Or nurse.

When he opened House up. "Holy God." Wadwah swallowed. "His skull is full of holes." Wadwah very gingerly probed the sight of one hole. It was soft like a damp sponge. "Jesus Christ, the bone itself is infected." He probed some other holes, all varying in sizes from a pin to a pencil head. "Probably osteomyelitis." Wadwah shook his head. He had not thought of an infection in the bone. Blood tests had shown elevated white count but only enough, he had _believed_, to account for the ear infection. Not this devastating bacterial damage.

"It's eaten some of the skull away almost to the lining. Christ almighty." Wadwah knew what they would have to do. "We have to cut away all infected parts or it'll keep spreading."

Wadwah began the gruesome task and underneath, lying on Houses' exposed brain was a white clot-like substance. "Probably infection too -- pus lying right against his cerebellum. My God." Wadwah realized that was the unexplained white matter that had shown up in the second CAT scan. "His fracture must have caused a hematoma which lead to the swelling and pain. Sometime in the last week, his ear infection became two infections. I'll wager he's got a form of strep or staph in there."

Wadwahs' assistant marveled at it. "The infections literally ate their way through his skull and formed an abscess."

Wadwah was sick to think had he waited on the exploratory. House might have been treated for his ear infection with a simple antibiotic until he died. "We've got to remove the infected bone and insert a plate. Get Doctor Malarious in here." Wadwah told the RN assisting.

"He's at a family wedding."

"I don't care if he's getting _married._ Get him." Wadwah said as an afterthought. "Tell him he can help us save Doctor Gregory House. He'll be famous."

Once he was satisfied the nurse was making the page, Wadwah said to his colleague "After we close, we start him on the strongest antibiotics we have." He stared down at the exposed brain of possibly the finest medical mind in the country. "Let's hope none of the infection has spread directly into his brain."

If it has, Wadwah thought, his chances of surviving are about one in five.

XXX

"I'm doctor Foreman, this is Doctor Wilson. I understand you have a Doctor House who underwent surgery this morning." He addressed the ICU unit clerk, a older woman with a halo of grey hair crowning an efficient face.

"Yes. He's in recovery. Doctor Wadwah, the surgeon, has him in a private recovery room. Last door at the end on the right. Scrubs compulsory. Do you want me to page Doctor Wadwah?"

Wilson nodded. "Have him bring the surgery notes if he will."

-

-

-

Foreman could see immediately that Houses' condition was grave. Through his paper face mask, he read aloud the chart hanging off the end of the bed. "Osteomyelitis, bone loss. They had to put in a plate." He looked at Wilson who was standing by the head of the bed staring down at his friend. "He had a abscess resting on his cerebellum. He's on fluids for hydration and he was being treated with erythromycin and Pediazole. Naroxin was added post surgery."

Wilson nodded. Houses' head was trussed up like a mummy. He was on a ventilator, fluids and a heart/lung monitor. "He looks like hell."

Foreman raised his eyebrows, forced to agree. He walked to the bed. "Looks like they may have caught it in time. His vitals are good."

Wilson sighed. "They said he was confused -- couldn't remember who he was." Wilson almost laughed. 'They also said he diagnosed a burn patient with _cancer_."

Foreman had associated with House long enough not to doubt the report. "That his medical knowledge is still intact is good news."

The door opened to admit an older physician with brush cut hair and heavy jowls. His expression, however, was friendly and concerned. He carried several pages of notes. "I'm Doctor Wadwah."

They exchanged handshakes and introductions. Wadwah looked down at his patient. "We did everything we could and so far he's holding his own. My concern is if the infection spread beyond the bone or the cerebellum." He handed the notes to Foreman who quickly pursued them.

In the pages Foreman found nothing he did not expect. "Well. There's no way he can be moved right now."

Wilson said "I'll stay behind. Monitor his condition." He looked to Wadwah. "If there's no problem with that?"

Wadwah shook his head. "By all means. We're all aware of Doctor Houses' reputation. And yours." Wadwah made to leave. "I've got a busy round this evening so if you'll excuse me. The clerk can set you up with a second bed if you want to stay over in the room."

Wilson nodded.

Foreman looked at Houses' white face. "I'll be here until tomorrow afternoon. Then I've got to get back. Page me if anything changes. I'm getting a hotel room. I'll call you with the number."

Wilson thanked him and seated himself in the stiff metal chair. No padded anything in the ICU. Nothing that could trap dust or give germs a comfortable home.

Wilson took Houses' limp hand in his own just so if House was awake down there somewhere, he might know he wasn't alone.

"Hey, pal." Wilson said, then choosing something House himself would say. "Nice hat."

XXX

Part V ASAP


	5. Chapter 5

Unidentified White Male

--

Part Vf

By GeeLady

Summary: This story is not AU but more Alternative Scenario. Major spoilers for Houses' Head. Almost everything is else the same but Amber did not get on the bus!

Rating: M. Adult. NC-17 Slash, language.

Pairing: House/Wilson.

Disclaimer: I manipulate the sexy House and others to my hearts content. No fee's, no earnings,...just fun!

Two things brought this story possibility to mind: House waking up in the peeler bar suffering partial amnesia and watching The Bourne Identity last night. Guilty! I'm borrowing the ideas and will try my own spin on it.

This story in no way is trying to "top" Houses' Head, I just wanted to explore where the episode could also have gone. _**I have also taken some liberties regarding scenes/dialogue from the episode.**_

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"My leg hurts."

House rolled onto his side. The ventilator was gone from his throat and the white wrappings from his head. His head didn't hurt at all. His wasted leg muscle and whittled nerve twitched and spasm-ed like a snake with a broken back.

Standing at the side of his hospital bed in ICU was the woman he had chased. It seemed their roles were now reversed. No one else noticed her. Not the nurse who came in to check his IV lines and change his glucose. Not the maintenance fellow who entered to empty out the trash basket.

Only he saw her. Only at he did she stare.

She crawled into bed with him, lay down and stared at him with eyes open so wide, they became two mirrors for him to peer in and see himself looking back. His face was a face in shock and fearful of the vision. As a man he was unconscious on the bed, life force slowly ebbing away. In her eyes he was already dead.

"My leg hurts." She said again.

He frowned and so did she. He moved his arm and she followed the movement, mimicking every motion and rise of brow or parting of lips.

"Who are you?" House asked the woman who was but was not him or even real.

"You know who I am."

"All I'm certain of is that I'm dying."

"Then so am I."

"Are you real?"

"Define real. This is a _real_ experience."

"I'm hallucinating."

"Me too."

"So . . .are you _me_?"

"No. I'm your subconscious. It's _you_ who are me."

"Semantics."

"You anti-semantic bastard. You thought _me_ up, not the other way around."

"I wouldn't project myself as a woman."

"You would if you wished you were her."

"That's not true. I do not wish I was Amber."

"But you want him and you know he doesn't want you."

"Stop trying to pick me apart."

"_I'm_ not the one who's trying to do anything, remember?" She rolled over onto one elbow and he could not help but copy her exactly. Nothing interfered.

"You want him and you know he will never want you." The woman with the mirrors for eyes told him. "You know why? Because you're older. You're uglier. You're a scarred, crippled, drug addicted drunk." She leaned in and spoke into his right ear. Her words coaxed blood to flow and things to grow. "If you were Wilson, would _you_ want _you_??"

She laughed softly. A low chuckle. A sound a dying man might make if he had something to laugh about. "I mean, really. _I'm_ you and I don't want you."

He felt the blood flowing from his ear to his neck. If she were real, she would be a vampire. His heart beat faster. Ever faster with every word. "You . . .you're just trying to discourage me."

"We're both doing the thinking here. Has Wilson visited us?"

House turned his head to look away from her eyes that exposed so much of him. Too much to look at anymore. Too many cracks distorting what looked back. "Well," House struggled to explain away his friends lack of appearance. "He probably doesn't know where I am."

"Doesn't _want_ to know, you mean. Did he come to Sherries for lunch that day? Or did he again say no to our invitation to still be some sort of person resembling a man willing to be a pseudo-friend? That is all he ever was."

"What . . .what day?" He was so tired. So very, very tired.

"The day of the crash. You must remember. We were in it. Got hurt. Pretty badly if we remember. Skull broken, heart broken. Sent home to heal by ourselves. Wilson really, really sucks at friendship, doesn't he? _That_ day. The day we sat in Sherries bar all afternoon and got tanked. By the way -- next time? -- no draft."

"I . . .I need to go to sleep."

"'Course. We're tired of this bed, of pain of disappointments. We're tired of life, House. We are _sick_ of it. Wilson's not coming anyway. We should just die. Deep down we know we want to. For a long time we've wanted to. We've just never found such an easy exit before. May as well take advantage."

"I don't want to die."

"No point in lying. I'm you. We know everything." She leaned over and kissed his nose and he let her. Then she kissed his lips and he allowed it. He was too weak to stop her.

"Let's see." She spoke for emphasis, to spur on the dying part; push it through; make it happen before either could back out. "In the last two years alone we've overdosed on drugs, shot up morphine - went after brain injections for Christ sake."

"I . . .I n-never went through with that."

"Only because we got found out." She laughed again and it hurt his head. Ricochet back and forth in his skull like bullets. Damage piled upon damage until finally the echo faded away. "Remember the looks on their faces?? What the fuck is wrong with fucked up House?? _That_ look. Come on. A knife in a wall socket? And now you've gone and got us lost trying to look for _yourself_. How nuts is that??" She shook her head in mock sympathy. He shook his in confusion and pain.

"House -- paint an "L" on your forehead and get it over-with already."

He defended himself against the onslaught of words he thought and she said, not knowing from within whom they originated - not really - and having no idea how to stop them. "I'm a Diagnostician. I run my own department. The only one of its kind in the country . . " He trailed off. So terribly tired. Deathly tired.

House gasped for air in a sudden overwhelming, suffocating heat. It poured off her in visible waves and surrounded him. It was a mirage in his mind but physically manifested though unseen to any but her. Or him. Boiling air off a lonely road laid down for him alone. Houses' mind baked, seeking escape from a subconscious long buried and forgotten, where demons rattled their cages and screamed.

The woman of his dreams, or himself -- he didn't know for certain anymore -- said her final goodbyes: "House . . .Cuddy tolerates us because of the name she thinks we bring to her hospital -- you know -- weird genius on the payroll? But mostly because of pity. If she can keep a lid on our obvious insanity - we'll still have a job."

Dream House in her woman form leaned in and spoke into his painful ear stabbing words like the sharp ends of a hundred hypodermics. In a perfect replica of Cuddys' voice, she said: "When I found you, you couldn't get a job in a blood bank. I got you cheap."

Dream woman stood now, preparing to walk away.

He could not stand to follow. He could not move even an eyelid to close off the awful sights she had revealed from her mouth.

She turned her back to him and the room and the dying man whom she was but wasn't. Whom had dreamed her and now let her go. Letting himself go. Becoming just another dream soon to be long forgotten in someone elses' memory. Or perhaps not as substantial as that. Perhaps only a hallucination someone who knew him might someday have. He would be ethereal in no time.

"House," She said, "Even Wilson can only stand you for so long. And that time has ended. She is so much better a House than us, don't you agree? New and improved. Not boring. But most especially, not a mooching, self centered creep."

He tried one last offense to halt the fire line drawing ever closer, blackening his skin, licking at his mind, in a hurry to burn him to a crisp. "You're lying. You're just a dream."

"We're one. If I'm lying, then I'm lying to myself. Who is myself if not you? We're liars. Even Cameron only saw us as something to _fix_. Anything other than that is unrecognizable."

House stopped answering. The argument was emptied, the weight of the words heavy on his chest. The power of them overcoming his feeble attempts at self preservation. Pride stumbled. Usefulness turned its back. Contentment built on spindly straws, loosely thrown togther over time, like a house made of sticks, titled sideways. It's flimsy foundation sunk into the sand of his shifting self image.

"It's not true." He said to her but himself. "Wilson cares. He always does."

But she had gone from his sight and taken life with her. The part of him that believed was no longer in the room.

XXX

"Get him prepped!" Wadwah ordered the night orderlies, who delivered their sickest patient to the OR nurses.

Wilson had answered the alarms. Wadwah had joined him and checked vitals. "Jesus, his temperature is over a hundred and four."

Wilson paged Foreman.

Foreman phoned in. "Yeah, Wilson . . .?" Sleepy voice.

Wilson checked his watch. Four ten AM. "House is crashing. Severe temp' spike and convulsions. Wadwah thinks the infection's spread to his brain."

"I'll be right there."

Twenty minutes later, Foreman entered the OR in a mask, scrubs and gloves, joining Wadwah and Wilson who were already present.

Wadwah briefly looked up from his patient. "Thank you for coming, Doctor Foreman."

Foreman merely nodded and asked, "What do we have?"

Wilson explained. "When we removed his bandages, there was new swelling and drainage. We're about to reopen the incision."

Wadwah made room for Doctor Foreman to get a closer look as he deftly sliced through Houses' partially healed scalp above and behind his ear.

"CT?" Foreman asked.

Wilson shook his head. "No time. He went from treading water to circling the drain. He's on full by-pass." Wilson swallowed hard. "So CT, X-Ray, MRIs -- anything -- is out."

Foreman noted the very basic equipment the small hospital had at their disposal. "I don't suppose you carry an operating microscope?" At Wadwahs' negative head-shake, "Didn't think so."

Wadwah added, "All we have here are eyes." He clipped the neatly done stitches from the first operation and stripped back the muscles. Wadwah could immediately see a problem. "Leakage around the plate."

Foreman looked close. "Discolored." Then real close, right up so his nose almost touched the edge of it, he sniffed. "Smells sweet. Definitely infection. Plate's gotta come off."

Wilson knew it meant an exploratory on the surface of Houses cerebellum. He said needlessly, "That's very risky."

"More risky than doing nothing?" Foreman countered. He knew Wilson was just being cautious. But if there was one thing he had learned from House, some risks are worth taking. He was confident House would agree.

Wadwah changed places with Foreman with the automatic understanding that the younger physician was the greater expert in matters of neurology.

Foreman quickly removed the titanium screws that were holding in place the metal plate protecting Houses' menages and brain from the environment outside his skull. His worst fears were quickly confirmed. "He has a clot resting against his brain." Foreman shook his head. "A little more than a cubic centimeter and it looks to be contaminated with waste matter."

That meant probably infection and that meant House was as near death as he had ever been.

Wilson was white with worry behind his baby blue mask. His eyes never stopped going from Houses' face to the vitals monitor. "His stat's are good for now." Wilsons eyes stared at Foreman, saying Hurry the hell up and remove the clot before we lose him for good.

Foreman incised the menages expertly, took up the tiny suction tube and micro-ounce by micro-ounce, vacuumed up the offending mass, moving his fingers with the care and attention of a master craftsman.

After thirty-five minutes of the painstaking work, "That's it. Screw in a new plate and we can close." Foreman said to Wadwah. Foreman stood back and let Wadwah give House the new skull plate. His eyes were bugged from all the micro-work.

Wilson knew they had no choice but to do so. If there was an infection inside Houses' brain, they would only be able to fight it from without. Drugs were the next weapon of choice.

XXX

"Ordinary antibiotics aren't going to be enough." Foreman explained outside Post-Op. None of the three physicians had even removed their scrubs yet. It was instead a hastily assembled last ditch differential held in a last ditch hospital arena. "House is already deep into Red Person Syndrome. We use any more antibiotics and he's going to start shedding skin."

Wilson understood the risk of a secondary infection would sky-rocket if that occurred. Skin was the bodies first defense against infectious agents.

Foreman continued, "And if we use steroids it'll crash his immunities."

"Then what?" Wilson asked.

Wadwah knew where Foreman was going and he cut to the finish. "Coumadin." He said to Wilson. "He's suggesting Coumadin."

Wilson was disbelieving. "_Rat poison_?? You want to fight his infection, his brain infection, with rat poison?"

Wadwah, as risky as the treatment was, knew that without it, House was as good as dead. Or a vegetable -- not the best next choice. "It'll get into every area of Doctor Houses' blood system and therefor into his brain."

Wilson felt the panic rise at the thought of it. House was already on the edge. It was like injecting a dying person with arsenic. "And bleed out if he gets an aneurism. It thins the blood - interferes with clotting. There's got to be something safer. Plasmapheresis."

"We could never be sure we had filtered out all the infection. and replacing his blood would not clean it out of his bone marrow." Foreman said. "It was in his skull, so it's in his bones." He explained patiently. "If we missed even a microbe . . ."

Wilson shook his head. Foreman stepped up to him. "Look, I know you're Houses' friend, but he's dying. If we don't do this, he doesn't stand a chance."

Wilson knew that of course and nodded.

Wadwah added supporting opinion. "It's the only way to be sure, Doctor Wilson. It's his best shot."

Wilson licked his lips. "You mean his only shot."

"Yes."

-

-

-

Doctors Wilson, Foreman and Wadwah watched the substance very slowly flow, drop by drop, from the IV drip to the needle taped to the back of Houses' limp left hand.

It was insane. It was pouring gasoline on a fire to smother the oxygen. It was Houses' only hope.

"How long?"

Foreman knew the risks too. He understood Houses chances were one in five. "For as long as he can stand. For as long as his vitals remain nominal."

Nominal meant not spiking or crashing. It meant steady. Not necessarily good. Not where they should be, but not dropping out of sight.

XXX

The first night, Wilson planted himself on the chair beside Houses' bed to keep an eagle eye on House and his rising and falling chest. And to listen to his reassuring heart as it continued to beat.

Foreman looked in on his patient and his patients' best friend before flopping down on an empty hospital bed for some shut-eye. He knew Wilson would probably not move until House either woke up or didn't. Either way, he was glad House had someone to watch over him. _No one should die alone._

Wilson would not let House die, never mind alone. Or, better yet, wake up alone. Not if he could help it. Except he really had no practical way to actually help.

So every-so-often Wilson would take his friends' right hand and squeeze it. "Sorry about the rat poison. Steve would laugh over this one, huh?"

XXX

Halfway through the second night.

"His O2 is dropping."

They increased the oxygen output from the tank to House and the indicator rose again, though not quite as high as before.

"How long?" Wilson asked Foreman again because he had nothing else to ask.

"For as long as he can stand it. A week maybe."

A week. Days and days in which something could go wrong.

XXX

The fifth night, House convulsed and all they could do was hold him down. Any drugs at all, for anything at all, were deemed too risky. "It's his temperature." Foreman explained though he knew he didn't need to. "His brain is telling him to cool off."

Wilson cracked a joke. Not a very funny one but he needed something to laugh about. "That's everybody then."

Cuddy, who had often barked at House to cool off, called every day to ask about him and Wilson reassured her every day that he was holding his own.

Wilson, arms shaking from the effort, was glad when Houses' third bout of convulsing eased then finally stopped. All went quiet again but for the monitors steady rhythms and the fear-pumped beating of his own heart.

Wilson returned to his seat by the bed. He sweated bullets in the warm room. He gulped air to calm his own terror that House might not survive this one. That the devils shoes had finally pinned him down for good.

Wilson found one lame joke per day helped, if not House, then himself cope with the odds.

But today had been a bad day. Four convulsions and his IV accidently ripped out twice. Two jokes then. "Never knew you could dance, House."

XXX

Day seven saw Houses heart rate act like a trapeze artist, rising to dizzying heights, then falling almost out of sight. Only there was no net to save him if it decided not to come back.

But each time it did.

XXX

On day eight Foreman did a needle prick to get a few drops of blood. It flowed thin and fast but they stopped the tiny bleed with two tight bandages. He did a culture and decided it was time to stop the treatment. "No sign of infection."

Wilson was frustrated anew at House who refused to wake up despite having survived his eight day treatment and himself an eight day vigil.

"Hey." Wilson sat close to Houses' wrapped up head and tried to sound angry. "I've got callouses on my ass from this damn chair. It's time you got off yours."

For two days he argued with his silent friend. House ignored it all. "Typical!" Wilson snapped at House but felt more hollow as the hours slipped by. "Just when things were getting interesting . . ."

But things had not actually _been_ that since Amber had come into his life. The sex had been interesting - stupid word - more than interesting but not much else had been.

Though she was nice and House made him insane . . .but nice was a little boring. House wasn't very nice. But never, never boring.

"What with your addictions and crazy schemes and almost killing yourse-" Wilson barked at his comatose friend who had no idea he was being watched over and cared about.

Wilson knew he had not shown House much of that for a long while. Not until now. _When he's dying, I'm the best friend there is. When he's healthy . . .well, alive, I send him off with remarks about cantankerous drug addicts and people who will die young from drink. I'm a thoughtful fellow._

"And I'm the nice one." He scolded himself aloud. House on his ventilator did not argue.

Wilson tried to recall the last time he and House had enjoyed a night on the town together.

Or an evening of television.

Or an after-work beer.

He honestly couldn't think of a specific day.

XXX

Day ten saw Houses' temperature rise once more and his heart slow. Wadwah said "His O2's are down again."

When they dropped again, Foreman said gently to Wilson. "He's not going to come back from this one."

Wilson nodded his reluctant but physician-practical agreement. "Remove the ventilator." He did not want House hooked up like a lab rabbit at the end.

From that point on, Wilson ignored all other interuptions, and others let him have his time, however long or short it proved to be, with his friend. If House was dying, and it looked that way to them all, Wilson didn't need the reminder. He could see for himself in the chalk-like cast to Houses' already fair skin and the colorless lips gaped open and cracked from the tube that had breathed for him for over a week. Why can't they make a machine that would _live_ for him?

Wilson locked the door to the room where House was to spend his final night on earth.

He drew the curtains around the bed and kicked off his shoes. Crawling in beside him, he gently wrapped his arms around House and got as close as possible to his best friend who he could never say goodbye to. "I'm sorry."

He was so sorry. "You said you loved me." Wilson looked at the ceiling trying to find the reasons he had used at the time as to why he had not answered back. They could not have been substantial enough to remember because he could not now recall a single excuse.

"I love you too, House." He kissed the side of his friends face. "More than I ever. More than when I actually had you to appreciate. What the hell was wrong with me that I let it stretch this far?" He rubbed his forehead. "It _should_ be us. You and me. We came back to that so many times. It just . . ." He raised his hands in surrender. "makes the most sense."

Wilson raised himself up on one elbow and studied Houses' white skin, its color showing his nearness to death and the lines in his forehead and between his brows betraying his age that was finally catching up to him just a little. Wilson leaned down and kissed House once on the lips.

Then he wrapped his arms around him again, cried and waited for his friend to die.

XXX

Wilson woke up to daylight behind the blue curtain and blue eyes staring at him from an inch away. For a moment he wasn't sure what he was seeing. Then the eyes blinked once.

Wilson sat up, staring down at House who was seeing, just for a moment, the woman of his nightmare. But she swiftly faded to be replaced by Wilson, the man of his daydreams. Waves of sweet relief washed over him when he understood.

"She's gone." He said to the Wilson hallucination.

Wilson thought of Amber. "No. But as soon as I figure out how to do it nicely. . ." _She will be._

"Am I dead?" House asked him.

Wilson smiled down at him, aching with relief. "No. Not your time I guess."

"Where--?"

"You're in a hospital." Shaking with gratitude to the devil. Or whoever!

"Again?"

"Yes." Wilson wanted to kiss him but he could hear the nurse with her key in the lock and soon there would be others too. He jumped off the bed to stand over his friend. Close to him. Real close.

Wilson stared down at House until House saw in his eyes what he hoped he made plain: That he loved him very much. And that the love would never change.

Never again be ignored or denied. He lay one crooked finger on Houses' rough cheek and drew it down in a tender gesture of affection.

"Come on, House. Time to get off this _bus_."

XXX

END


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